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A recent case in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that First Amendment law allowing high school administrators to review and censor student publications does not apply to college students. Now, a federal court with jurisdiction over the Western United States reached a different result in a similar case, and the Supreme Court elected two weeks ago not to review that case.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the University of California could censor and punish a student for writing critical comments in the “Acknowledgments” section of his Masters’ thesis.
A three-judge panel heard the case, and two judges found that college students had no greater claim to free speech rights in the curricular context than high school students. Citing a 1988 Supreme Court case, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which approved of censorship of high school papers, the court found that the personal acknowledgments contained in an academic document are not subject to any First Amendment protection.
The case began when Christopher Todd Brown, then a graduate student at University of California at Santa Barbara, inserted a “Disacknowledgments” section after his thesis had been approved. The section criticized school officials and then-California Governor Pete Wilson for interfering with his education.
Upon discovery of the critical remarks, the committee revoked its approval of the thesis. Brown was unable to earn his degree and had to spend another year at UCSB. Even when Brown removed some of the “offending” language, the committee still refused to approve it.
Brown contended that the action violated the First Amendment because school officials retaliated against him for his criticism. He also argued the university had singled him out, as numerous other academic papers had been approved containing insults and vulgarities.
Nevertheless, one judge found for the university because, even though the university had a practice of allowing students free reign with regard to statements made in the “acknowledgments” sections, the university had the right to treat the section as academic speech — not entitled to First Amendment protection. Another judge simply said Brown had engaged in deceit by not including the offending section his original submission to the committee.
Writing in dissent, Judge Stephen Reinhardt “vehemently” disagreed with his colleagues. He noted that the court had adopted “an erroneous First Amendment standard … regarding the authority of public universities to limit the speech of graduate students that I believe to be wholly inappropriate — a standard that would seriously undermine the rights of all college and graduate students attending institutions of higher education.”
While the opinion stressed that it only applied to so-called “curricular” speech, it’s possible that school officials, at least in some western states, may now believe they can censor school papers, speakers, plays and the like.
Even as applied to curricular speech, the case spells the end of student dissent. A student who disagrees with the views of a professor would have little or no recourse, even if the student could show that the punitive action was motivated because of the student’s protected speech.
Harvey Silvergate of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education called the decision “outrageous” and F.I.R.E. appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied review several weeks ago.
With an apparent conflict in the circuits over the means of Hazelwood as applied to college students, the Seventh Circuit case could be ripe for review.